(1) As to proper names. It seems clear that those who regard the true proper name as a meaningless label are nearer the truth than those who assert with Jevons that a proper name has for its intension all the predicates which can be truly ascribed to the object named. As has often been observed, it is a sufficient proof that, for example, John does not _mean_ "a human being of the male sex," to note that he who names his daughter, his dog, or his canoe John, makes no false assertion, though he may commit a solecism. So far the followers of Mill seem to have a satisfactory answer to Jevons, when they say, for example, that he confuses the intension of a term with its accidental or acquired associations. (So, again, we can see that Socrates cannot _mean_ "the wisest of the Greek philosophers," by considering that I may perfectly well understand the statement "there goes Socrates" without being aware that Socrates is wise or a Greek or a philosopher.) And if we objected that no proper name actually in use is ever without some associations which in part determine its meaning by restricting its applicability, it would be a valid rejoinder that in pure logic we have to consider not the actual usages of language, but those that would prevail in an ideal language purged of all elements of irrelevancy. In such an ideal scientific language, it might be said, the proper name would be reduced to the level of a mere mark serviceable for identification, but conveying no implication whatever as to the special nature of the thing identified. Thus it would be indifferent _what_ mark we attach to any particular individual, just as in mathematics it is indifferent what alphabetical symbol we appropriate to stand for a given class or number. I think, however, that even in such an ideal scientific language the proper name would have a certain intension. In the first place, the use of proper name seems to inform us that the thing named is not unique, is not the only member of a class. To a monotheist, for instance, the name "God" is no true proper name, nor can he consistently give a proper name to his Deity. It is only where one member of a class has to be distinguished from others that the bestowal of a proper name has a meaning. And, further, to give a thing a proper name seems to imply that the thing is itself not a class. In logic we have, of course, occasion to form the concept of classes which have other classes for their individual members. But the classes which compose such classes of classes could not themselves be identified by means of proper names. Thus the employment of a proper name seems to indicate that the thing named is not the only member of its class, and further that it is not itself a class of individuals. Beyond this it seems to be a mere question of linguistic convention what information the use of a proper name shall convey. Hence it ought to be said, not that the proper name